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Some developmental aspects of sentence processing and memory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lorraine K. Tyler and
William Marslen-Wilson
Lorraine K. Tyler
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
William Marslen-Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

Three groups of children, aged 5, 7 and 11 years, were tested in a clause-memory task, in order to investigate the role of syntactic and semantic factors in children's recall and processing of spoken continuous prose. The children listened to a story, which was interrupted at intervals during which they were asked to repeat verbatim the last sentence they heard. The test-sentences always consisted of two clauses: either of the main–main type, or of the main–subordinate or subordinate–main types. The prose material was also either normal prose, or semantically uninterpretable but syntactically normal prose. The results suggest a developmental sequence in which the youngest group's performance is dominated by semantic factors. They do not show the adult clause-memory effects, their recall is dominated by the main clause, and their recall of normal prose is not clausally segmented. The two older groups' performance more closely approximates that of adults.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , February 1978, pp. 113 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a grant to W. Marslen-Wilson from the Spencer Foundation. We thank the principals and staff of the University of Chicago Laboratory School and of the Ancona School for their cooperation. Address for correspondence: Max-Plank-Gesellschaft, ProjektGruppe für Psycholinguistik, Berg en Dalseweg 79, Nijmegen, Holland.

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